There was more than one important match in Tel Aviv this weekend. Before England and Israel scrapped over European qualifying points in the Ramat Gan Stadium last night, Gretna FC gave Manchester United all the trouble they could handle in a downtown park on Friday afternoon. And Tottenham only just got by Reading.

But the fans did not riot and there were no grumbles from the managers. There was nothing for them to complain about, in fact, because there was not one foul, not a dive, no wild-eyed posturing, not a trace of cynicism. Just honest endeavour and hugs and smiles at the end. So well behaved were the players, they did not need referees.

Fantasy football? No, just another stunning reminder of how children can put adults to shame with the sheer power of their innocence.

The symbolism ran deeper than the obvious football analogy suggests when 160 kids, aged between 10 and 14, from Arab and Jewish villages in northern Israel arrived in the capital to take part in the sort of cross-community tournament that makes you wonder where on God's earth our decency disappears to once little boys start growing facial hair.

It was about football - and it wasn't about football at all. Playing in kit supplied by 16 English and Scottish league and non-league clubs, they provided a multicoloured mosaic as pleasing to the eye as those that decorate the temples of worship their parents regard as sacred. Except, consumed by the joy of their football, they left behind the prejudices that often go with religion.

These were kids who normally would not spare each other a nod in the street - because they are not encouraged to. Most live in segregated towns and villages. If they share a town, they stay in their ghettoes.

Members of the mixed teams did not necessarily know each other. Their parents might even have thrown rocks or something more lethal at each other. But the children remain unsullied yet.

Arab girls, wearing jeans to cover their legs, kicked and ran alongside Jewish boys, and Jewish girls and Arab boys were thrilled to be playing in the colours of United, Spurs, Gretna, Reading, Nantwich, Wycombe, Dagenham & Redbridge, two Wealdstones (home and away), the England 1966 team, Wayne Rooney '06, Kick It Out, Norwich, Ashford Town, Crewe and Wolves. No doubt there were a few Christians, maybe a couple of atheists, in there, too.

Brendan Batson, the former West Brom player who has devoted much of his post-career life to fighting racism inside and outside football, was impressed. 'Did you see that?' he asked as a girl kicked a ball into the face of an opponent, then stopped to pick her up and wipe away the tears. 'Remarkable.'

And it all was. You had to wonder why we would not see similar scenes in youth football in the UK, instead of the aping of adult excesses. In three hours of football on four pitches, there was hardly a raised voice. No scouts, either. Actually, there was one, John Lambert, who keeps an eye on South Coast talent for United, but he was here in his capacity as a senior lecturer in physical education at the University of Brighton. The university has been at the heart of the Football For Peace (F4P) tournament since its inception in Galilee seven years ago and Lambert was one of several colleagues and volunteers making it tick, helped by the British Council and the Israel Sports Authority. The FA and Kick It Out were there, too. So were the British Ambassador and Mayor of Tel Aviv. There is no lack of goodwill, it seems.

John Sugden, professor in sociology at Brighton who has written widely about sport in divided communities, knows that football will not work miracles overnight, especially in a society as complex and blood-spattered as Israel. But, he says, neither should anyone of conscience ignore injustice.

He reflects the measured optimism with a question mark inserted in the title of a book he has edited with another Brighton lecturer, James Wallis, Football for Peace? The Challenges of Using Sport for Co-existence in Israel. The modest aim, Sugden says, is to 'make pragmatic and incremental grass-roots interventions into the sport culture of Israel'. It has not been easy. There has been resistance and suspicion. Arabs, 1.4 million of them, make up nearly 20 per cent of Israel's population. Eighty per cent are Muslim, most of those Bedouins - and few have been assimilated into football with much enthusiasm.

While there are two Arabs, Walid Badir and Salim Toamah, in the national squad, club football is marred by bigotry. The New Israeli Fund, guided by Kick It Out, publicly identifies racist fans every week, particularly at Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Israel's two most rabidly anti-Arab clubs. Racist chants such as 'Death to all Arabs' dropped by 25 per cent last season, but even Beitar's most famous fan, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has yet to challenge their influence.

F4P is gathering momentum. It has a bigger tournament in the summer, attracting 1,200 players. I asked one boy what he thought of it and he just smiled, given his smattering of English. His language is Arabic. He does not speak much Hebrew. Nor would many of the Jewish children speak Arabic, so rigid is the divide.

Their common language is football, expressed through all the flicks and tricks they have seen on TV. That is where the mimicry stopped, though. It was weird seeing football played stripped of the anger so ludicrously portrayed as passion at the highest level.

Then, an awful and depressing thought invaded the optimism. Of the 160 bright-eyed youngsters scurrying about, how many would resist the call to violence that is so loud all around them? Who would be gunned down or sent to prison? Who might lose life or limb to a cowardly car-bomber?

Last night, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, arrived in Israel for talks about a conflict that seems insoluble; today, the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, will shuttle in to do the same. They will, no doubt, fly out as perplexed and frustrated as ever. Maybe they should have gone to watch some football in the park.

The really important football in Tel Aviv this weekend was not that played last night by grown men behaving like children. It was the football played by children behaving like grown men ought to.